How to Resign Gracefully

Any chance you can do a post on how to gracefully resign? I have been interviewing for other jobs (attorney), and anticipate that one of those interviews with eventually turn into an offer. I have not disclosed to anyone at my current employer that I am looking elsewhere; it’s a small office, and I expect that news of my departure will be poorly received. Any thoughts on how to best navigate the tricky waters of transitioning from one job to another would be most appreciated!

Good luck to you in your search, J! I think we’ve all had daydreams/fantasies of screaming “I QUIT!” and rushing out the door, cardboard box in your hands, wind in your hair, as inspiring music plays. Amazingly, this isn’t the recommended route to leaving your job. For starters, when you go to clean out your office you will be absolutely gob-smacked by how much stuff you’ve managed to accumulate — so that whole “single-cardboard box” image will not work. (Pictured: quitter, originally uploaded to Flickr by hellojenuine.)

In general, I think resigning your job is a balancing act — you need to assess your future employer’s needs, your current employer’s needs, and your own needs, with the hope of accommodating all three sets of needs, leaving on good terms, and making sure you get whatever benefits are coming to you. Obviously, these suggestions are just for once you have *accepted* the new job offer. Some things to consider to help you resign your job with grace:

– Attitude — have a good attitude when you resign, and do it with a smile — say how much you’ve enjoyed working there (or something that rings true to you — that you’ve learned a lot, or will never forget your time there) but that it’s sadly time for you to move on. Tell them that you’ve accepted a job with ___ and can stay until ____. That’s all you need to say. It doesn’t matter how much your current job drove you away, or how your new job will be so much more awesome — leave on as high a note as you can. Along these lines, try to finish your projects on a positive note with people, even those coworkers who annoy you. Sunshine! Happiness! You’re leaving soon! Similarly, if you have a going away party, try to avoid getting drunk — in many cases this will be people’s last impression of you, and you want to make sure that you leave a good one. You may also want to check out our advice for people leaving an internship — a lot of the networking advice there is doubly true for resigning your job!

– Timing. Technically, I think only two weeks’ notice is required, but in a lot of jobs (I would include law/banking in the mix) I think 4 weeks is appreciated. Timing is a tricky thing, though: most employers will want you to start ASAP, which may not work if:

you have projects on your desk at your current job — you should leave enough time to either finish the projects, or get someone else up to speed to take your place. This is one of the key things — don’t screw over your old employer when you leave. Leaving on good terms is the goal here: you still want recommendations and the ability to network with your former colleagues and bosses. Make sure that your employer sees whatever efforts you make to bring someone else up to speed — cc: them on the emails or memos, or send them updates along the lines of “I showed Y how to access and find the documents she might need for tasks A, B, and C.”

you have a bonus coming to you. A lot of law firms are giving spring bonuses now (congratulations to everyone getting one!) and my advice to you, if possible, is to wait to resign until the money has cleared your checking account. I’ve heard far too many stories of someone resigning after bonuses were announced but before they were actually paid out, and then not getting the bonus and kicking themselves. If it’s just a spring bonus (which, from what I understand, is just in the low 4 figures), it may not be worth it if your new employer really needs you; you may also be able to negotiate with them to get a signing bonus or something comparable. On the other hand, if it’s tens of thousands of dollars, think long and hard about resigning before you get that money.

you already know you need/have a vacation planned after your start date. If you have a two-week trip planned, be up front with your new employer about this — they may want to delay the start date until after that time.

Finally, this is a very different question from what reader J asks about, but I’ll mention it also — if you’re pregnant, planning to quit when your maternity leave ends may not be a good idea. Every office is a bit different, though — for example, I knew one woman who had a very intense first-half of the year, and then went on maternity leave — she came back to the firm for about a month, collected her bonus, and then quit, leaving on good terms. On the other hand, I’ve heard of one friend who took her maternity leave, fully expecting to return to her job, and then realized she just couldn’t leave her baby at home, so she quit — her bosses were not happy. I know one pregnant friend was directly told by her bosses that it was better to let them know in advance if she wasn’t planning on coming back, with the promise that the next time there was a job opening she would be the first person they called.

– Other details. Do not leave the cleaning of your office until the very end (see above). Similarly, look at what benefits you have at your current job before you leave — do you have money in your flexible spending account? have you talked to HR about what will happen to your accrued-but-not-used vacation days? if your current job has certain perks that your future job does not (for example, free continuing legal education classes), do your make use of them before you leave.

Readers, what factors should one consider when quitting? How do you resign your job with grace?

Comments

My advice: start cleaning your office *before* you give notice, in some non-obvious way. Bring home personal stuff you want. Figure out what you’ll want as a writing sample (assuming not confidential), download your work Outlook contacts, etc. Basically, be prepared for the possibility of being asked nicely to leave immediately.

Yes. If you work in a field where you deal with proprietary information and you’re leaving for a competitor (or perceived competitor), it’s not unlikely that you’ll be asked to leave immediately.

I’d also add that you should tell your immediate supervisor in person, on the same day but before you submit your formal resignation. He or she should find out directly from you, not from anyone else. It’d be nice to also tell your immediate coworkers in person, but your direct supervisor should be the first one you tell.

I’m so glad you posted this – Brazen Careerist had a similar post recently (but of course much more irreverant and not as applicable to lawyers, etc.) I am an attorney who will be giving notice as soon as I work out some offer letter details with a new employer. As such, I just cannot motivate to bill. I mean, I’m billing like 3 hours a day, if that. If I’m going to leave in 3-4 weeks, should I pick up the pace as a matter of good karma? Or can I just fly under the radar? When I finally tell my department head next week that I am pursuing another opportunity, will he look at my low, low hours and make any judgments? I don’t want to burn any bridges here, obviously, but MAN it is difficult to motivate to bill my required 8.25 or whatever when I know that I’m not long for this world. Basically, if anyone has had anything like this come back to bite them let me know. Or should I live it up for my last four weeks (long lunches, manicures…)

I should add that of course I’m doing all pressing work — I’m not leaving anyone hanging. I just can’t motivate to bill those extra hours I SHOULD technically be billing were I worrying about my 1900 requirement or whatever…

I’d try to bill at least 5-6 hours a day so it doesn’t look like you’re a slacker. People will remember the last impression you leave on them. I don’t see any reason why you should kill yourself to meet 19oo hours, though.

I just lateraled from one firm to another and gave two weeks’ notice. I was billing about 4 hours each day before I officially gave notice, and about 1-2 afterwards. I don’t think anyone noticed or cared. Basically, as long as you don’t leave anyone in the lurch and your clients’ interests are protected, enjoy having some part-time off.

Working less than half of the amount expected before you give notice is probably not a good idea, people do notice, and you never know when you are going to need a recommendation from someone you would never expect. Once you’ve given notice, it is a different story.

I’ve left two private firm attorney jobs, always gave at least six weeks notice, and have great relationships with former colleagues at both places. In contrast, at my current job, several attorneys have given just two weeks notice and it has not been well received. It may be different in other industries, but because of the time involved in turning over matters, I really think more notice is always a better practice for attorneys. If you are very junior, it may not matter as much.

In boom times, one attorney I worked with left to join a very successful local start-up. He left a f-you note for a partner that had given him a hard time. One year later, the economy had crashed, and he came back to the firm. I know corporettes would never behave so badly, but it very is true that you don’t know where the future will take you, and you may need help from the colleagues you’re desperate to escape now.

Maybe my situation was different because pretty much every associate at the firm was billing +/- 4 hours a day (being that slow was one of the primary reasons that I left). The rest of your advice is spot-on. It’s never worth it to leave on a less than graceful note.

In my experience, shorter notices are common in the private firm world, at least in my city (for partners especially) – I can think of a couple of people who left on a week’s notice, and one who announced his departure on a Wednesday and left on a Friday. I know that for partners, the strategic considerations may be different (given that the process for hiring partners away is often more hush-hush than standard associate interviewing), but I’ve seen this at the associate level as well.

The only people I’ve seen giving 4 weeks’ notice have been those who have left to teach or to go in-house or to a trade association – they’ve often announced their departures several months in advance. But those who move to other firms typically pull the trigger quickly.

What are you supposed to do when your manager/boss takes it out on you for leaving? I assume the answer is nothing, but has anyone else experienced:

-Giving notice and then being told the next day if you don’t “shape up” you should just leave and never mind your two weeks (yes, this really happened and no, it wasn’t a job where it’s the standard to leave right away when you quit like a partner/counsel would likley do).

-Your manager refusing to speak to you for several days because he/she took your resignation personally.

I had a job where I was set to give my 2 weeks notice in a couple weeks, but the boss beat me to it. Except, he was trying to use the threat of losing my job as a motivational tool, and was somewhat put out that I actually called his bluff and said “Ok, my last day will be two weeks from today”.

He spent the next two weeks trying to scare me into staying (“You aren’t going to find anything better out there”), telling me why I wouldn’t succeed anywhere else, pleading with me to stay (“We can change your workload so you are only doing X”), and taking the leave personally (“Why are you leaving me?” Really – its like I was breaking up with him). Then the last 3 days were silence and I left as soon as I got my paycheck on Friday.

Two weeks later the other two female attorneys in his office left, giving their notice the same day as they left because they were concerned about viciousness, since they were most of his family practice and took a lot of the clients with them.

I had this situation at my first job out of college (prior to law school). My manager took it personally and reamed me out for giving notice (I gave 3 weeks incidentally, at a firm where people routinely gave 2), saying that I better do good work for the last three weeks. I was so shaken I just let her scream (no exaggeration here), even though she basically accused me of having a poor work ethic (after promoting me twice). Apparently, many people heard of the incident and it came up in her review at the end of the year.

Then, kid you not, it happened to me again when I gave notice at an in-house job. For a variety of circumstances, I could only give exactly two weeks notice, but you would have thought I had give two days notice from the bullying that ensued. This time I had law school and several years of experience under my belt and pointed out very calmly that I had a strong work ethic (I had been promoted once already, but did not explicitly point that out) and that I would handle myself just as professionally in my last two weeks there as I had before. She tried to pressure me to give more than two week’s notice and I said I could not, at which point she implied she would call the state bar. I was so disgusted I just let her talk. Then I called an employment lawyer who assured me what I already knew, which was the state bar would laugh at her trying to say that two weeks notice was a sign of unprofessionalism and that she was just bullying me.

I have no advice – my view is that if someone pulls that kind of stunt – they are never going to be a good networking contact for me, so I was civil, held your ground (ie I really could not give more than 2 weeks notice as I had exactly 20 days between the day of my offer and the day I was expected to start work and I had to move cities) and did good work right up until the very last day.

thank you – I tried to be very professional about it, but it sure felt horrible – plus I was convinced there was something wrong with me that it happened a second time. Talking to an employment lawyer helped though – he said that type of unprofessionalism is not uncommon and to just give no one any reason to complain about you.

When I left my career to go to law school, I took my boss to coffee to tell him. We were very close and I knew it was going to be a much longer conversation that I felt comfortable having in our small branch office.

I gave 4 weeks notice because I was lucky enough to know that they would need me to train someone to take my place and I trusted my boss. Granted I was not leaving a job as an attorney, but I wrote up a sort of manual for the new person to refer to if she had issues after I left. I wrapped up my projects as best I could and passed them along to a variety of people at my office. I was lucky to have everyone support me, but I think doing everything you can to make the transition as easy as possible for your colleagues is important.

Any thoughts on whether it is ever appropriate to tell your employer some of the negative reasons you are leaving, when the work environment has become toxic, blatantly unfavorable for women with children, or otherwise unbearable?

Yep. The only time I have ever done this is in an HR exit interview. The interviewer thanked me for the info. From what I heard from former co-workers after I left, absolutely nothing ever changed. So don’t do it thinking you are going to be the crusader who changes the place for the better (because that almost certainly won’t happen) and especially do not burn bridges to do it, especially if some of the criticism you have is personal for someone.

I happened to become friends with my predecessor.
She told me that she had a long talk with HR about how things went in our department and why she really quit. HR went straight to the department lead, not to discuss any issues but to give her an inside scoop of the exit interview. That resulted in a yell-fest. My predecessor was accused of throwing the department manager under the bus.
Good to know, I won’t make the same mistake.

These are largely the reasons I am leaving, but I have decided NOT to mention them; indeed, I am even going to avoid an exit interview as much as possible. Even though all of the above may be true, I can see how others could/would construe them as simply as the perceptions of one employee (me): I’ve knowingly chosen a field that is high stress, unfavorable for women, etc. Yes, of course there are things they could do to change, but I don’t think my leaving is going to make them change, and I’m quite sure I’ll only come across as bitter and angry (because, of course I am). As my mother says: you catch more flies with honey. I’m going to be as polite and straightforward as possible and will trust that leaving with goodwill and positivity will do more than negativity. This just my anticipated approach: I’m interested to hear what others say.

I did this at a position I left about 3 years ago – the position was coordinator of a non profit that was part of a larger financial incubator org – and it was my telling the HR dept of the financial incubator the weird demands that my boss was putting on me (i.e. asking me to babysit her kids in our office, pick up her kids at school, having me work out of her home when she wasn’t there but her husband was, fax personal paperwork to her mom – and I wasn’t an assistant or anything close to it). This was more of a “look – she’s kinda crazy – and whomever else she hires for my job – she’s going to treat them this kinda crazy too.” esp. because I had a lot of respect for the financial incubator group and my former boss was putting them in some questionable insurance areas by having employees work at her house/deal with her kids…

Brazen Careerist did a post on this at one point–something along the lines of “why you shouldn’t give an exit interview.” I don’t agree with all of her perspectives, and I’m still not sure where I come down on this one, but I found her thoughts interesting.

She basically said that if you’re leaving b/c you don’t feel that people listen to you, what makes you think they’ll start listening when you’re about to leave? If they never exercised the behavior before, what makes you think they’ll start? Her thinking is that you risk harming burning bridges giving feedback to people who are unlikely to take it. If they had taken it, you probably wouldn’t be leaving.

When I left my job before law school everyone knew it was because I was going to law school. But, one of the primary motivators for me to really think about what I wanted to do was finding out that I made 30-40k less than several male peers. There were some mitigating factors (1 more year of experience, one person had an MBA), but nothing that could reasonably account for that kind of disparity.

Frankly, I was angry, and I stewed about it for months. I never brought it up with my boss (my own fault), but I did tell HR in the exit interview that I was aware that there were significant salary differences, it was a primary motivator for me to seek other opportunities.

When I left my last job I took the position that my old employer might as well know why – if anything I say can possibly help the next person, that is a good thing. I was pretty direct. But then again, my exit interview was with HR in a giant BigLaw firm so who knows what happened with my comments.

Just gotta say this about exist interviews–and I’ve done them as an employee and worked in HR, so I have the view from both sides of the fence. I was in a Fortune 100 company in manufacturing and there were so many issues, from the unethical to the actionable, that I wouldn’t know where to start. . .

In my experience, exit interviews were pro forma. HR is rarely in a position to do anything to change the situation that made you crazy enough to leave. I’ve come to the conclusion that it’s best to save yourself the aggravation and leave with a smile on your face and to avoid the exit interview altogether. It’s like dealing with any unjust situation–you have to choose whether to fight it or whether to move on. I strongly advise moving on.

I just gave me notice last week (moving to an in-house position) and I am being “required” to write an exit memo to the partners in my pratice area listing all of the good things and bad things about my experience with my firm. I have been strongly instructed to be brutally honest since “what are we going to do? fire you?”, but I just can’t. My draft now is full of nothing but niceties.

Does anyone else have experience with this? I just feel like I am being put between a rock and a hard place. I certainly don’t want to burn any bridges.

I was in a similar position leaving my job pre-law school. What I did was find something relatively neutral to “complain” about so that I wasn’t dodging the question but wasn’t burning bridges either. I talked about the lack of ergonomic workstations (the job involved a lot of writing) and how it contributed to me getting carpal tunnel and having to take time off from work for physical therapy, etc.

Wow, this sounds like a minefield, and it’s very unfair for them to put you in this position. They have nothing to lose – they can either take your advice or leave it – but if they don’t like what you say, they can hold it against you in future references, referrals, etc.

If they are that interested in what is wrong with their company, why people are leaving, and what they can do to fix it, they can hire consultants to come in and do an organizational analysis with confidential employee interviews (I know, because I do that kind of work). This sounds to me almost like some kind of blackmail attempt, frankly – they can hold on to the letter long after you’re gone. I would stick to the niceties and leave it at that.

I have a similar question. I worked for 1.5 years prior to beginning my clerkship, where I will be until December. I am going to apply for different jobs and will definitely NOT be going back to my former employer for many reasons. The problem is that I don’t want any potential employers to contact my old firm, if at all possible. How can I make this happen? Should I ask that the new firms keep it confidential in my cover letter, or is that crazy? Do firms know not to contact people’s old firms in case they don’t know the potential employee is looking for a new place?

On a similar note, I am hoping to start a new job in January 2012. When should I start sending out my resume? I will be looking mostly at big firms.

You should talk with your judge before sending out resumes, but if it’s all right with the judge, you should start sending out resumes now. The job market is still really tough, and a clerkship isn’t as helpful as it used to be.

My clerkship is ending in August and, *eeks, I have not sent out my resume yet. I feel very behind the times.
In my defense, I have been having informal conversations with a few people in my field and have 2-3 firms I am going to submit to and the chapter 13 trustee as well.
Definitely talk to your judge about it, my judge has allowed me to do these informal meetings/conversations, but when I submit my resume I will have to recuse myself from any cases those firms are in. Presumably, when I make a decision and chose one of the jobs, I will be able to again work on the other firms I elected not to join.
Good luck on your search. So I am trying to time my submissions to when the Judge will be out on conferences so I can hopefully get the ball rolling and will be closer to making a decision without having to recuse from too much.
As for not contacting your old firm, I am not sure how to word that. Usually confidential involves not informing your current job, but that would not really apply here. Maybe if you phrase it like your former employer is not aware you are not rejoining so discretion would be appreciated.

When I worked in headhunting business (on the office support side), we would frequently get resumes where the applicant was job-hunting without his/her employers knowing about it. It’s perfectly normal. I can’t recall the phrase they used, but something such as your search is confidential, or paraphrase this “please be advised that I have not informed my former work-place of my job search, and would prefer that you not contact them until this is in the bag, or a need for references apply, or whatever”

I read the internship post Kat linked to. One of the things it warns against is contacting superiors on LinkedIn whom you wouldn’t ask to write your recommendations. Is this really a no-no? My school’s career services has been advising me to use LinkedIn, and my current MO is to meet with alums, and then instead of writing thank-you emails, writing thank-you messages on LinkedIn. So far, no one has not connected with me as a result. It’s helped me build up a group of respectable looking professionals on LinkedIn, although I would never ask any of them to write a recommendation. (Personally, I think the recommendations are stupid — so many of them are friends recommending each other using the exact same phrasing.)

I use linkedin with alums, former profs who I actually know (most from grad school where I was in smaller classes), and co-workers. In my case, my bosses have added me on linkedin. I think it’s great for sending thank you’s – but I’ve never actually requested a recomendation – and other’s I know who have them (esp. good ones) got them because the person felt inclined to do so – not because they were asked to do so.

Good point. I think a) 2008 was a bit different — Linked In was still fairly new back then, and b) it’s different if you’re leaving an internship versus leaving a job. If you’ve actually worked with people, feel fine to “link in” with them. I’ve also started doing it more casually — certainly in the blogging world (met X at a cnference, will now link in) and in the legal world also (X, Y, and Z know my name from collaborations we’ve done for my non-profit job; while I wouldn’t turn to them for a recommendation I’d want to stay on their radar through the years if possible.) I should revise that post…

This is clearly not what you are doing, but I was recently told by someone at a career fair table talk that she no longer gives out her business card because when she did so, tons of students would try to connect with her on LinkedIn. Weird. But I missed out on being able to send her a nice thank you email (we had a long, friendly chat) because I did not have her contact info (and couldn’t reasonably track it down online).

One note about the pregnancy/maternity leave issue: (and I know that this will be controversial)- I’ve heard a lot of people say that they will avoid hiring youngish women if they can because they have been burned too many times by women who leave for maternity and never come back or similar (while leading their employer to believe that they intend to return). I know that that’s not fair, illegal, etc., but ultimately, it is what it is. (And, while I certainly don’t support that, I understand their frustration if that has happened to them.)

So, if you’re thinking of being less than upfront with your employer about your intentions regarding maternity leave, please consider how that might impact not only your coworkers, but your fellow corporettes who might be job hunting out there.

Note: this happened to me, and I am sure it happened to other people too. I was fired (from an Am100 firm) when I was pregnant. It was ostensibly performance-related, but I had never had any prior bad reviews. I got a lawyer and argued with them, and ended up getting a settlement of approximately 3 months’ pay, in addition to the regularly-scheduled maternity leave. I also signed a confidentiality agreement. So if you think that your colleague suddenly decided not to come back from maternity leave, think again – she may have been fired and can’t talk about it. I am still really PO’d at the firm and how this probably contributes to people’s poor perceptions of child-bearing females.

This whole attitude really irks me, and in my experience, the idea that tons of professional women stop working after they have a kid is not even true. I cannot think of a single female attorney (or staff member, for that matter) at my firm who has left in the last 10 years or so for this reason. Meanwhile, a number of associates, both male and female, have left to go in house go to another firm, or otherwise pursue other opportunities. So whenever some jackass mentions this ridiculous line of reasoning for not hiring women in their childbearing years, I ask them to name an attorney who hasn’t returned to work after maternity leave. Usually they can’t. There is always a risk that when you hire someone, they will leave sooner than you want. It is not specific to women.

I know quite a number of women who have. Of course not everyone does, and it’s not good (in fact, quite bad) to assume most women will, but I will note that leaving after one or more maternity leaves in a short period of time is in a bit of a different category than another employee leaving “sooner than you want.” Paid maternity leave at many big firms is a generous, expensive perk and while of course it’s offered with the knowledge that some people will use it in this way, I don’t think it’s surprising to find that no one likes it when people do. I understand you haven’t seen it in ten years at your firm, but in several years, I’ve seen it 4 times. The male associate who is burnt out and leaves after two years and 4400 hours billed is different from the female associate who leaves after two years and 3670 hours, having been paid the same.

I don’t know. This is a tough issue for me. When I had my son, I was one of those women who was dead set on coming back to work and did let everyone know that. Then, I got to the end of my maternity leave and didn’t really want to go back, but did it anyway because I felt like I had made a commitment and wanted to honor it. As it turned out, going back to work after maternity leave was a huge mistake for me, and one of the only things in my life I would go back and change if I could. The company I worked for back then was a truly toxic environment for working moms, but more than that, my head was not in the game. I was miserable, I made my husband miserable, I screwed up at work several times, and it was just a huge mistake. I could have saved everyone a lot of time and energy if I had just not gone back.

But. Now, I have been on the other side of it. I had a great employee go out on maternity leave this summer, promising us she was going to return. We got an email from her TWO DAYS before she was supposed to come back to work, basically just saying “I’m not coming back, sorry. See ya!” We were in a scramble to replace her. I don’t think I would have felt as bad about it if she had said two weeks before we expected her back that she wasn’t coming back, because then we would have had some notice. But as it was, she left uncompleted projects and we had had some projects on hold waiting for her, and had to hire someone quickly to work on them. I know she wanted to max out her leave benefit before quitting, but we were left with a bad taste in our mouths. I would still give her a positive reference if asked, but would probably be less than effusive with my praise.

So I would say to women having babies, do think the decision through. I totally understand not wanting to go back, and believe me, it is impossible to know what you really want to do until that baby is born and you are sitting there looking at him/her. However, is it worth getting an extra week of benefits to potentially burn a bridge with an employer who might otherwise love you, recommend you, hire you back? About 85% of the women I know who have quit to stay home at one point, went back to work within 3 or 4 years. Don’t be so shortsighted that you create a negative-reference situation that will haunt you.

I know this is veering off topic, but I’m curious- how was the work environment toxic for moms, but not for dads (or was it for both)? The reason that I ask is that you hear that a lot, specific to working moms, and it seems like it implicitely assumes that the mom is carrying the childcare weight and dads are not. Which is not an assumption that I think is fair.

“it seems like it implicitely assumes that the mom is carrying the childcare weight and dads are not. Which is not an assumption that I think is fair.”

Uh, I’m sorry, but in 99.99 percent of the parenting marriages/relationships I know about – including my own – the mother does the majority of the childcare. I consider myself to be lucky because my husband does quite a bit compared to other dads I know – but I still do the majority, meaning 60-70 percent. I understand that a lot of women feel that “when I have kids, my husband is going to do 50 percent of the childcare because we have a 50-50 marriage.” All I can say to those gals is – yeah, good luck with that. I don’t know anyone, anywhere where it works that way. I don’t have a good explanation for why it doesn’t. It just doesn’t. I don’t think it’s necessarily that women have a greater attachment to their kids than dads or kids make more demands for their mom’s time vs. their dad’s. I think there is almost always just one person in the relationship who does the majority of the childrearing – and I say this because I know gay male and lesbian couples where the imbalance still exists (including one lesbian couple where they say they have a “traditional marriage” because one woman stays home with the kids, and the other goes out to work). All I know is my husband is one of four dads – for 85 kids – who is at my son’s daycare on a near-daily basis (he does the morning drop-off most days). I know this because my daycare director told me. If you live someplace where this is not the case – awesome, tell me where it is, because I’ll move there and tell all my working mom friends to do the same. But I have never seen it, and the sociological research doesn’t seem to support a widespread occurence of situations where parents split parenting 50-50, and there is not a greater expectation placed on the mother to leave work when a child is sick, for example.

In any case – the reason why my former employer was “toxic for working moms” is because regardless of your childcare situation (which they did not ask or care about) or how much you were/weren’t there – as soon as mothers returned from maternity leave, they were almost always shunted into less-important, less-critical, less-high-profile positions and steered away from important projects. Men did not experience the same “mommy-tracking,” at all. The assumption, from the time I got pregnant, was either that I would not come back, or if I came back, I wouldn’t stay – and actually one person told me “you might as well not come back, because if you do, you’ll wish you hadn’t.” She was right, and the reason she knew it was because she had seen it, over and over for 20 years. To the point that they are now trying to recruit me into a class-action lawsuit about “mommy discrimination” against this company.

I hate when people begin posts with statements like “um, I’m sorry”. I never know if they mean to sound as rude as it hits my ears (or eyes).

Look, the thing is, if I assumed that a woman I was going to hire was going to have primary childcare responsibility, I wouldn’t want to hire her either, if it were a demanding job that required full attention. As long as women are claiming that it is assumed that they will take almost full responsibilty for childcare, we can’t possibly be on equal footing with men in demanding jobs.

Lyssa, I’m with you on the part about responsibilities of working parents – it’s a juggle to have a young kid at home regardless of your gender. Does more responsibility often fall on women? Yes, but not always and employers shouldn’t assume that’s always going to be the case.

But in terms of your original question to Ann – why a workplace could be a toxic environment for moms but not for dads, I think Ann’s explanation is 100% right. It’s not necessarily that the workplace isn’t understanding of the need to leave early periodically (or any other flexibility a mom OR dad with childcare responsibilities might require, per se) – it’s that you can be treated differently by those around you. Assigned worse work, have people assume that anytime you’re out of the office, even for a work meeting, it’s because of your child, etc. I’ve seen as much happen to a fairly senior woman in my workplace, and it’s disheartening. My office is FANTASTIC about treating us like professionals and I’ve seen dads on the calendar as “in late, parent teacher conference,” but I’d still describe the environment as toxic for moms (or something similar) because of the way certain powers that be ratchet back responsibilities and assignments for moms with young kids — and not dads.

This seems deliberately obtuse. You know full well it is toxic to moms, not dads, because moms still bear more of a burden. Snaps to you if you don’t, but it is a fair assumption. Moms also are usually the ones busy “making up for” taking “time off” for maternity leave.

“Look, the thing is, if I assumed that a woman I was going to hire was going to have primary childcare responsibility, I wouldn’t want to hire her either, if it were a demanding job that required full attention.”

Oh. So then you’re officially part of the problem, vs. being part of the solution. Congrats.

Move here, Ann! I live in Southern California, and easily 40% of the pick-up and drop-offs at my daycare are the dads. (There are other reasons not to move here, but still….)

I suspect there are a few reasons for this – my kid’s daycare center is in a residential neighborhood (so many people do live close) but also close to a major employment center (so many people do work close).

Also, many of the daycare kids “graduate” to a private school in the area, so the idea of a mom doing drop off and pick up twice in one day is not really feasible for most of the families since nearly all of the parents work either full or part-time outside the home .

I work with an attorney whose husband works as an attorney at another agency. She takes off all the time when the baby is sick. Frankly, I think less of her husband AND his employer because of the situation. It is not fair of him or his boss to ASSUME that she has to do all the childcare.

Biglaw midlevel associate, billed over 2000 in a year where I missed a slight bit of time on maternity leave here.

The attitude towards men and women having kids in my office is staggering. Guys who leave to go to their kids events are hailed as great dads – by the male and female partners alike. Women, on the other hand, are not committed for engaging in the same behavior. I missed every one of the class parties in my son’s daycare, despite trying to schedule them, and often for no reason. I missed dinner with my son on his first birthday, but made it for cake. I’m careful to avoid any mention of my kid in front of certain people — and I never was an effusive mother.

I hate to say it, but I’ve committed to always being among the top 10 highest billers out of the hundreds of associates, and to pretty much always leave last. It sucks, but its what it took to get my “cred” back after maternity leave — and I also nearly got fired when I got back.

I was planning to come right back after maternity leave but then, towards the end, realised I wanted to spend a few mths more with baby. Plus I was drained and I didn’t think I could give 100% at work.

I spoke to bosses + HR and agreed that I’d come back for 3 mths (1st Q of year) to do a smooth transition and take the rest of the year off before transitioning back to look for my next role. It worked because:

– i gave enought time for a smooth transition
– i made sure they knew they could call me if needed
i was anyway due for a move into my next assignment and boss had already lined up my replacement

I was lucky enough to start an in house job at 7 months pregnant. When I was interviewing in the early stages ( I spent 2 months at my old job because I had to finish up work for my clients), I made sure to tell everyone that I was pregnant and would be taking maternity leave. When I got to the Senior VP I would be working for, he thought it was great. Turns out he has 8 kids and he told me he is expected home by 6:30 at night!

Just wanted to tell you all that there is some hope for good employers out there. Plus my husband is great- he does “daddy daycare” 2-3 days a week and we have a nanny the other days. This has made leaving every morning much easier and made traveling much easier. I just try to do as much for my son when I am home to spend time with him and give my husband a break. But you wouldn’t believe how much attention he gets at the mall or library on Wednesday afternoon. You would think he is the first man to ever hold a baby the way people go on and on.

Oh man. This is a concern of mine as my husband and I are hoping to have more children.
I try to make it clear that I am the primary earner in my family and my husband does contract work and takes on the primary caretaker role. This way my employer won’t be freaked out if I indeed get pregnant, everyone knows I will be returning.

A thought from a different perspective: Not returning to my firm is the exact position that I find myself in. I have worked at my big law firm for nearly three years and am deeply questioning whether I will return to THAT firm after my maternity leave ends. During my pregnancy, the stress of the job placed my health and that of my child in jeopardy. I spoke with my practice manager about the the complications with my pregnancy and nothing changed. The fact that the firm and numerous partners made negative comments about my pregnancy (“she can’t handle oral argument at seven months pregnant”) made me seriously question how the firm and partners will handle me being a new mother. Also, my baby is now my top priority and that includes not subjecting him to a miserable mother who works 100 hours a week. In short: sometimes a woman’s perspective and priorities change after she has a baby, and sometimes she works in a caustic environment that becomes unacceptable after she has a child. (sorry for any typos. Getting by on nay three hour chunks of sleep has it’s effects.)

I’m one of those people that doesn’t really want kids. I accidently mentioned this in an interview and ended up getting the job. I always feel bad that I am now the token woman they felt safe hiring b/c of that slip up. The other woman is a very out lesbian – not that she can’t have babies, but the chance is much slimmer for the employer.

It accidently came out because the interviewer was talking about the travel he does for work and how he uses the ff miles to take his kids to Disney, etc – and I think I said I don’t have kids and am not planning on having any but I’d love to use the miles to ski out west… OH well.

Honestly I wish I could find ways to mention that in interviews. I don’t really like kids and don’t ever plan on having any, and I’d love for potential employers to know that because, fair or not, I do think they assume young women aren’t as likely to stick around.

My husband is the primary caretaker: he usually works at home and he has always done most of the cooking and he supervises homework. He never “helped” with the baby; rather, he took care of his son. That said, he had a job working out of town for three months and I had to go out of town for a few days for work. He did not want to tell his boss (a woman with three children) that he had a childcare conflict. Once he did, she was more than accomodating. Men need to step it up!

KZ: do you have elderly parents? Siblings? While you would like to get a leg up in an interview, life throws curve balls, and babies are not the only humans who need constant care. Many adults must work and care for severely disabled adults. I would be turned off if a woman suggested she would be a better employee in that situation.

Maybe not in River’s case, but women do change their minds. I never thought I’d have kids, but I did. I never mentioned my earlier view in any interviews, but just saying that employers are smart enough to know that there’s no ironclad guarantee, so I’m sure you got hired because you were better than the rest!

This discussion has been playing over and over in my head for the past several weeks/months. I am a mid-level associate at a mid-size NY firm, and I’m 6 months pregnant with my first. On track to bill my required 2000 this year, were I not taking leave for three months. I’m planning to take my three months of maternity leave (unpaid) and then come back part-time, if they’ll let me…or maybe not at all. I just don’t know how I am going to feel until I’m home with the baby. I might love it and not be able to leave. I might say, “Get me out of here!” :) I have no doubt that the loss of my income would require some serious budgeting, and some creativity, but we could swing it.

If I do decide to stay home, I don’t want to burn any bridges, and I want to handle it in the best way possible. But I just don’t see how I can tell them anything other than I’m coming back, because I may very well come back. And, I don’t want to screw up my entire career. I would anticipate returning to work in 3-4 years, not for this firm, but likely for something in the same practice area, where I would see these people all the time. I just can’t know until it comes and being a type-A planner, that is very hard for me to accept.

I’ve already noticed the quality of my work assignments changing, which does not give me a good feeling for when/if I come back. And the mommy/baby/belly comments are endless. No one has gotten pregnant here in several years…and apparently the last few women who did either did not come back, or left soon after coming back. I’ve only been here about a year myself.

Anyway, it’s nice to know I’m not the only one out there stressing over this. I have also seen the same differences here between how the young daddies are treated (As I mentioned, there are no mommies of young ones). Daddies are heroes for leaving early for the soccer games, to help with a sick child, etc.

Any advice for jobs with built in expiration dates (i.e. fellowships)? I think there it’s a lot easier, but also unclear when the last day should be. If it’s a particularly long fellowship and you want to start a new job earlier, then what? Also, how secret to keep the job search, especially if you want to switch states so you have to take a few days off to interview.

My first job was a fellowship. The end date was established in writing, so that wasn’t a concern for me, but during the last six months I felt totally comfortable asking for time off to do interviews, asking for references, etc. I think it’s reasonable to expect that a job search will take 6 months and to ask your fellowship to accommodate your search accordingly, with the understanding that you won’t leave the fellowship before the set end date.

Small note – I’m not a lawyer, but I don’t think law firm spring bonuses, at least in biglaw land, are in the low 4 figures as the post suggests. My significant other is a 4th year at a V5 firm and getting $15k (I know there is a range, but high-4 to low-5 figure depending on firm and class year is closer to reality, from what I’ve heard).

I am a 3rd year associate considering leaving my current position for a different firm. I have been working on putting my resume together, but I am unsure as to how much detail I should add with regard to my job description. Should I simply list the practice area(s) I worked in and assume that most interviewers know what type of legal work that entailed, or should I put a detailed description (and if so, what types of things would I list)?

I’m sure other people have better ideas, but if I were hiring you, I would want to know what your skills were just as much as your subject matter expertise: negotiated multi-million dollar settlement, handled all aspects of discovery, defended depositions of high-profile clients, successfully prosecuted 15 summary judgment motions, etc., etc.

I would discuss exactly what my work entailed and, if I had autonomy at a young age, I’d tout that. There is wide variation in the level of autonomy and courtroom/direct client experience firms give their young associates. If you were lucky to be one of those associates not stuck in a library for 2 years, spell that out on your resume. Mention the areas of law you’ve worked in, but be detailed when you can.. talk about any big wins you’ve had. Were you allowed to witness prep on bet-the-firm litigation? Argued a summary judgment motion on $2MM case? Include those details. Include dollars where you can. Those are differentiators that tell potential employers the size/complexity of the work you handled – it lets them know just how much confidence your employer had in you. While you don’t want to turn your resume into a novel or oversell yourself, the more details you can include to differentiate your experience from other 3rd year associates, the better!

Do employers really take it personally when someone moves on to another job? I’m really having a hard time believing people are that unprofessional. And if they are, well, there isn’t really anything you can do, I guess. Quitting, to me, seems akin to going on vacation. It happens, and the person leaving should do their best to make their absence as easy on their (former) coworkers as possible. A good employer would obviously have a practice of doing exit interviews to make sure that there wasn’t something fixable that was causing employees to look elsewhere. But taking it personally? I have never encountered that and would have zero respect for that kind of employer.

Ding! Yes, I had that happened (though I work in science/medicine, not law). He said almost nothing at the first meeting when I told him about my new position, asked me the next day to just think about leaving right now, and then said almost nothing to me for the remainder of my time there. He also turned weirdly passive-aggressive and communicated with me almost exclusively through e-mails to HR. We were OK by the end, but those 4 wks between my telling him I was leaving and when I actually left were dreadful.

No one offered an exit interview, but I had already talked numerous times with our program director about what I perceived as the shortcomings of the job, my boss’s overall weirdness, and the cutthroat culture/environment. (Not that it helped – she was very defensive.)

Yes! At my first position after law school, my supervising attorney just sat there when I told him and his eyes started watering. He came into my office the next day, threw a folder at the wall next to my chair and screamed at me for the formatting of a brief I’d researched and dictated (but not typed, formatted, or received back from staff yet). Then didn’t talk to me for 5 days. Then told one company that called for references that they’d laid me off. My second firm involved a partner whose eyes also watered, and then who walked around the office talking about the lack of employee loyalty and how everyone there was using him, even though he hadn’t given anyone in the office raises or Christmas bonuses for 3 years (despite taking a ski trip and 2 additional trips to Europe every year and building a new house worth over five mil – in the midwest). A small firm that I clerked with very briefly changed all of the locks everytime someone left just in case they’d copied their keys, even though most people were so ready to leave they wouldn’t even stay the full 8 hours every day.

To be fair, I worked in the corporate world for a few years between undergrad and law school and everyone there was far more professional and accepting of the reality of people leaving/staying. I think it’s more of a medium-sized firm issue (or small, perhaps?).

What are everyone’s thoughts on leaving your contact information with your old colleagues? I struggled with this one when I left my last job as certain managers had a habit of calling former employees to ask the questions on projects they had worked on.

I think it’s common to do so in order for people to stay in touch, but I would certainly not volunteer to be contacted for work related reasons.

In terms of answering questions once you’re gone, I think if there’s a quick answer to something (“oh, Sally in accounting maintains that list”) go ahead and give it, but if you’re being called upon to assist in a major way with a transition or essentially being asked to help train someone after you’re gone, I think you just say that the duties of your new job prevent you from being able to offer that level of support.

What are your thoughts on leaving your contact information with your old colleagues? I struggled with this one when I left my last job as certain managers had a habit of calling former employees to ask the questions on projects they had worked on.

This is about “notice” and I understand that expectations are very much related to employment setting. But as someone who runs a fairly intensive operation in academia (that is, I’m on the administrative side of things), I am appalled by the number of people who have given me 2 weeks, when they’re responsible for major projects or events that are taking place a month or two down the line….or when they have committed to other projects in the future. When I hire, I always tell the candidate that I would not want to be left in the lurch, and therefore I don’t want them to leave THEIR employer in the lurch. But I keep being left in the lurch…..I know it sounds like I must be some kind of witch to have so much turnover.

Kind of agree. It’s thoughtful of you to defer start dates to be fair to the current employers of your new hires, but that’s by no means universal.

I think either you need to build something into the employment agreement that requires a longer notice period, or ensure that no one person is so key that their responsibilities can’t be transitioned in a two week period.

I thought the day I quit my biglaw job would be the happiest of my life…just a big FU to the stress and the punishing lifestyle. It turns out that the partners I spoke with in my practice group were so complimentary about my work and (genuinely, I believe) surprised/ disappointed that I was leaving, that by the end of making the rounds I was in tears. Like I had heard my own eulogy or something. For the next two weeks I had to deal with people stopping by to ask if I was sure about what I was doing, and alluding to partnership decisions, etc. I really started second-guessing myself, since it was a hard decision to leave and take a job that was a big unknown.
To this day I really regret not having that perfect “so long, suckers!” moment I had pictured.

I have experienced the same thing! If only partners were nice, supportive and complimentary on a regular basis how different would the world be!!! Driving people into the ground is just such an odd and uproductive business model!

I’m dealing with this now too. I am planning to leave my job – where I’ve been for less than a year and am generally unhappy – in the next couple of months. Coincidentally, rumors of layoffs are abounding at my company, and as a relatively new hire I would presumably be one of the first “layoffees.” However, my supervisor has assured me that I won’t be laid off because I’m too valuable. But I don’t think I can really count on that.

I can’t figure out how to feel. On the one hand, I feel guilty for planning to leave when I’m considered so “valuable.” On the other hand, if they’re going to lay me off anyway, I shouldn’t feel bad at all about leaving of my own volition. I just want to straighten it out in my head!

Primarily it’s important to envision the scenarios. What will you say when they try to retain you? My advice: Say as little as possible. Do not get drawn into discussions. Keep thanking them, “Yes, understood. I do believe this is the right choice for me now. I appreciate everything you have done here.” If they get belligerent, keep your cool. Burn as few bridges as possible.

Well, it can be worthwhile to listen to what they say when they try to retain you. If you’re not 100% committed to the new job, your old job very well may offer you things that make you want to stay. This was the case for me – a nice raise and a new office made me decide my current job was better than the new one, and so I stayed.

I’m glad it worked out for you, but I generally advise people never to reconsider a decision to resign when they are counteroffered, no matter what the counteroffer is. This article does a great job of explaining why.

I suppose it depends on the reasons why you are considering taking another job offer. In my case, a headhunter had contacted me, and the main reason I would have left was pay. I hadn’t formally accepted the offer yet, either. So the advice in that post didn’t apply to me.

Interesting, I just saw it work very differently for another coworker last month. He had been trying to get his responsibilities increased for a while and not finding anyone really willing to make it happen. He was headhunted by a competitor, accepted their offer, and handed in his resignation. After panicked calls from the president and CEO, he ended up getting a fair number of concessions and is staying on with us. I’m told he did something similar to be allowed to switch to our satellite office. Of course, his skill set is pretty much irreplaceable, so it might not work so well for others.

I had a boss who I never worked directly with, who was not a fan of me. She was my boss’s boss. When I quit – partly due to her loony behavior which would take too long to detail here (she told the office staff how much money I was making) – she was LIVID. She complained to everyone about “how much she had done for me”, and would not speak to me. I gave proper notice, so this wasn’t an issue. On my last day, she stood in the hallway “ignoring” me pack up and head out and did not speak.

This could not be more perfectly timed for me. I posted a few months back about how completely miserable I was at my big law job and how despite my huge student loans, wanted to work for a non-profit organization. Well, I just got a job! Hurrah!

The only catch is that they want to speak to my current employer before making the offer official. I’m fine with this in theory (all details will be ironed out before they speak and I’m positive I want the job) but in practice, my bonus will be paid out at the end of this month. If they contact him before this point, I fear they will withhold my bonus, even if I’m working here at the end of the month.

How do I gracefully broach this subject with the new employer? Do I tell them that I’m about to lose a biggish bonus and since this is a huge pay cut, could really use that money for my loan payments in the coming year? Or do I do something less direct?

I think I’d be less direct – “Can you wait to contact him until after DATE? We have some human resources things coming up, and I’d prefer he doesn’t find out that I’m planning to leave until after that’s complete.”

I don’t think there is anything wrong about being honest about the timing of the bonus if the person you are dealing with came from biglaw– he/she will understand the issue. If they don’t have a similar background, then probably best to couch the reasoning in more vague terms as Anonymous above suggested.

Haven’t ever done this, but before you start going into why, I would just state that it would be best if contact with your employer could be made on April 1st and ask if it would be possible to call on that date or the following week. See what they say. If they question it, then I think you can be frank with them.

I wouldn’t put it in terms of “I’m taking a pay cut to work for you, and I need the money,” since that’s none of their business and is unprofessional. You can and should explain that you have a bonus coming as of X date, and you would request that they refrain from contacting your employer until after that date. Then make sure you talk to your boss first, after the bonus but before they call your boss.

I just dealt with this issue this week, with an employee who did not choose to leave gracefully. Some of her bad feelings were warranted – she had been switched to a different project that she didn’t want to work on, due to a development with one of our clients. However, we had tried the best we could to make “lemons out of lemonade” and keep her employed, even if it was doing something she wasn’t thrilled about, until we could find something better for her to do. Regardless, she was angry, got another job, gave notice, and left in such a way that I will be unlikely to ever recommend her to anyone who calls for a reference. My advice is:
– Be nice. Even if you are exiting a bad situation, look at it this way – at least you got another job and are on to bigger and better things, which is something positive. Whatever problems you have at your current job are about to be problems no longer. Look forward, not back.
– Give notice, and not three days, but a reasonable amount of time. You don’t have to stay on another six weeks just because they ask you to, but a couple of weeks would be nice.
– Be a grown-up and even if you are mad, or it was a bad job experience, bite your tongue. It’s a small world and you very well might run into your old colleagues or bosses again, professionally or personally. “Don’t burn bridges” is always used in this circumstance, but I would say even singeing the bridge is not a good idea. Even if you have a new job, you will probably job-hunt at some point in the future, and you don’t need people in your past who wouldn’t hire you if their life depended on it. Because if someone asks them, they may very well say that, and it will kill your possible future opportunity.

Not my usual name but you’ll see why==Five years ago I left the firm I had been a partner in for almost twenty years. It was a small firm and the newer partners were driving me crazy, revisiting every financial issue we had worked out over twenty years. When I told my therapist I was going to leave, she asked me what I was going to say and I told her all my grievances. She said no, this is what you are going to say and it was the best advice anyone ever gave me. You are going to tell them every wonderful thing you learned there or that happened to you while you were at the firm. Then you say “But I’m afraid if I stay any longer I wont feel the same way, so I am opening my own office as of the first of the year (ninety days away). Not only did we part on great terms, but their going away present was to pay my first years malpractice premium for me. They still send me work (I’m in a specialty they don’t have) and I send them work. Never burn a bridge, cause you just don’t know what’s coming down the road. And the smaller a town you practice in, the truer it will be.

Have any of you given notice only to be persuaded to stay by your current boss because of promotion, pay increase, more vacation, whatever? And what were the results of staying? Did you later wish you’d left? (Anonymous at 5:06 raises this point, and I wonder if any other Corporettes have had this happen.)

Yes! I am an associate at a small litigation firm in California, and I work for a handful of male partners. I left a large plaintiffs’ class action practice to learn how to be a trial lawyer. It was one of the motivating factors for taking this job and rearranging my life. Three years in, I just wasn’t getting courtroom experience. I kept advocating for experience, and they kept promising, but nothing changed. The final straw was when I prepped for a hearing, including precious weekend hours away from my kids, and when oral argument actually happened, the partner in court with me stood up and argued my motion (without preperation and somewhat nonsensically). I figured I could get treated just as poorly, get as little trial experience and make far more money at a bigger firm, and I gave notice. The powers were shocked. They promised that *this time* they’d change. That was a little over a year ago. I’ve now got four trials under my belt, and it turns out that I really enjoy the work I finally get to do. And, I’ve just recently been offered a partnership.

Yep. The firm pulled out all the stops when I gave notice. They promised me the work I wanted, gave me a nice sum of money, and told me I was poised to make partner. I stayed (and used the cash for a down payment on a house). For better or for worse, the firm did not give me the work that I wanted, and two years later, I gave notice for the second time. I made clear that I could not be wooed.

My feelings about my decision to stay are mixed. On one hand, staying was an enabler. I made a ton of money, I bought a house, and I developed some new skills. On the other hand, I was really unhappy for two years because I was never staffed on the types of cases that I wanted to work on and I felt like I was misled.

I had a boss refuse to talk to me once. He was known as a jerk by all so didn’t take it personally. He wouldn’t meet with me to discuss who would take over my many many assignments, so it was tricky to prepare the others well in time. I kept gently coming by and expressing the importance of needing to know who would do what, and made proposals and packages ready to transfer quickly. In the final meeting, he let loose accusing me unfairly of stuff. I thought about responding or calling HR, but I just listened and left and never looked back. Months later, he sent me weird long sappy emails with updates and fond-type language. I responded with a curt, short but polite 2 line email. He was mad and a jerk, and realized it later. Looking back I sort of wish I’d stood up to him in person, but it would have been tiring- he wouldn’t have taken well to other viewpoints at the time. And I didn’t want to create a scene- I was leaving, period. He imagined and accused me of planning my move months in advance, which wasn’t true- I had been laying groundwork to leave someday, but gave notice within days of finalizing the details. Anyway- do what feels fine to you at the time, with a jerk there’s no perfect solution. Everyone else will know if the person is the problem anyway not you; while it might feel good to say your piece, I don’t know, it is risky. It was hard to listen to unfair accusations though; I have wondered how it’d have gone had I voiced my feelings. But can’t rethink the past much, no point. On and upward!

This is a really interesting discussion. In the UK, in my sector, I have been contracually obliged to give no less than 2 months notice at the start of my career, and currently have to give 3 months notice.

In another job- I did the classic graceful thing. Made the call, wrote the letter, smiled and kept it all general, both to those who were fabulous to me, and those who were not (understatement). To the ones who were bad to you, doing the classic thing actually feels good, because you have the upper smug hand. Especially if you are going to a better job, they know it- there’s just nothing left to say. Prep your old projects for others, smile, walk out the door.

I’ve been struggling with this as well, although I’ve only just moved into serious job search mode so don’t have any prospects at the moment. I’m in a small (3-attorney) firm where it has shrunk from a handful of associates to just me over the past few years. Periodically the partners hire contract/temporary attorneys on the theory that it could become permanent but for one reason or another they never seem to work out or mesh with the personalities in the firm. I know it will take more than two weeks for the partners to even decide who to interview, much less hire and get someone up to speed. There’s no-one currently to take over my cases.

Over the past year, I’ve taken a few opportunities to speak with the partners about my concerns about the compatibility of my position here with what I would like to do with my life (i.e. have children, buy an apartment, live up to my earning potential so I can one day pay off my student loans) but they have not really taken my concerns to heart, even when I’ve said point blank I’m not sure I can stay. I’ve tried to get them to hire more associates, but they never make a serious effort to do so. I plan to give them as much notice as possible, but given that they primarily hire new associates rather than experienced ones, there’s no way I’ll be able to get someone up to speed fast enough to take over my entire caseload. I care about and respect both partners, and feel tremendous guilt that I will be leaving them in the lurch, but at the same time I feel like I’ve done all I can to give them the opportunity to make back-up plans, even at the risk of their deciding to just replace me before I found an alternative.

I think you’re right – you’ve already gone above and beyond. Try not to feel guilty. Find yourself a better job, give 2 weeks notice (or more if you’d really like to and the new firm is fine with a later start date) and then just go. They have their heads in the sand and I don’t think there’s anything more you can or should be doing at this point.

Any thoughts about not telling your current employer where you’re going next? I had a colleague leave and essentially refuse to mention the name of the company he’s going to. Is this common practice?
I think the idea was he didn’t want anyone to call up the new company and jeopardize his offer… or just wanted to keep it quiet until he actually started working there.

I worked for a while at a place where there was a time commitment and when someone broke the commitment, the uber-boss would find out where they were going, call their new employer and tried to get their offer rescinded. She even tried to do this when someone was leaving to go back to school (without taking any vacation in between) and was breaking her commitment by only two weeks – it’s not like she could push back the start date for school!

Long after the uber-boss left the culture of not revealing where you were going remained…

Also saw a boss do this to a co-worker who left once. I always try to err on the side of not saying (or if it’s a subsidiary, use the head company’s name instead of the specific subsidiary or job department).

I JUST gave notice at my current job too. I’ve got another potential job in the works, but I have planned to leave for a while now anyway due to family health issues and a desire to move back closer to them (I’m on the opposite coast now). I gave about 3-4 weeks notice, and so far there’s been some awkwardness, but everyone has been basically understanding. It’s a stressful process no matter what, but if you dwell on the positive and do everything you can to put them in a position them to be in a good place in your absence, that’s the best you can do.

I’m in a bit of an awkward situation. I have been offered a judicial clerkship, which I intend to accept, that doesn’t start until June. The problem is, I have to accept (or not) by November because the judge would want to begin searching for a different clerk then if I were to decline the offer.

The judge is sitting in one of my firm’s cases, which I have been working on (lightly), so he will have to disclose the employment relationship to the parties as soon as I accept. Of course, the firm needs to hear this from me first, so I will have to tell my firm eight months in advance that I’m leaving.

This is all kinds of awkward. I’ve only been at the firm eight months. I worry that no one will want to staff me on their cases because I’m leaving. I’m also worried about my bonus for this year. Not to mention it will just be generally strange around the office, because I think people will start to see me as temporary.

I know it’s relatively common for attorneys to return to the same firm after a clerkship, and I would be interested in coming back, but of course these things are by no means certain.

Any advice on how to minimize the fallout/awkwardnes of announcing my departure eight months in advance?

Thoughts on how to handle unused vacation days? My employer does not have a “buy back” program, and I get 26 per year. I may leave in the fall for a graduate program (so no threat of stealing company info/move to a competitor) and have never once used it all (most I’ve used in one year I think is 13, probably closer to 5-6 if you could the vacations I’ve spent actually working – spent my whole European Alps weekend sitting in an internet pub and on calls!).

There is no formal approval process for vacation time, or, I think, anyone keeping track of how much vacation I have/haven’t used. I would hate to have it all go to waste if I choose to go to grad school (as I believe I am entitled to it). However, I don’t want to “screw my company over” either. How do people typically handle this?

Good post. With the job market being the way it is, it’s definitely a good idea to make sure you have a pretty good amount of employment options available before you jump ship. There was another article I read that’s a good companion with this one. It actually goes so far as to insinuate that a job you hate is a whole lot like a prison. Here’s a link to it: